


Rise and Fall

by penandfink



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, community: asoiaf_exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-05
Updated: 2011-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-21 02:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penandfink/pseuds/penandfink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An introspective morning and a night in the early days of Ned and Catelyn's marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rise and Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fauxkaren](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=fauxkaren).



**Day.**

Before sunrise, when the world is still grey, Cat wakes with last night’s lovemaking still in her memory. The second time was after they had drifted off to sleep, when he kept stirring though the fire had died. She found his forehead damp with sweat and took away the furs, leaving only the sheets around his legs. After that he breathed soundly, and soon he pulled her to him. What it is about his dreams that trouble him, she never can tell, but she likes the way his hands feel on her then, and she never asks.

There are many things between them that remain unspoken. Who were you as a child, do you miss me when I’m gone, am I everything you expected. There is the other babe, who looks so much like Ned that it makes her curl up like a dead leaf with sorrow. There is the fear that perhaps she might always prefer Riverrun to Winterfell, as beautiful as his castle is in its own way. There are all the scars of last year’s war, things she wishes he would not spare her because she is not used to such sheltering, the many little ways she’s reminded that they had not been fashioned for the other by anyone’s plan.

She watches him wash and dress and lift little Robb out from his crib in the corner, and part of her is flummoxed as to what more she could want. Then he smiles for his son, a smile true and beautiful, and she knows. It has been a long time since she’s had to wonder if she could ever come to love him; these days, she thinks often about prayers, how the devoted sing their faith across the ether to wherever the gods dwell, and never receive any words in return. She and Ned pray differently, and she must think about that too.

The light of day only gets brighter, and the room lies exposed around them. There are no shadows to hide in during the day. If only things were easy between them, if only a fire could come and clean the space out where they try to light a spark – and it seems to her, as she lies in his bed and wonders if he prefers coffee or tea, that they go about things in reverse.

“Breakfast?” she asks anyway. He shakes his head; there’s a storm approaching and the men will have to start quickly if the hunting is to finish in time. “One day you should take me with you.”

“Alright,” he agrees pleasantly, handing her the baby who has waited with remarkable patience for his turn at his mother’s attentions. “One day.”

She rises from the bed with her boy and watches a bird disappear above the clouds, and thinks, How can we? 

  
 **Night.**

In the blue of the room she looks like a marble building, a tower of light to call the ships in to shore. Before the war there was no time to know her, the girl who had married him in his brother’s stead, the woman who bore him a son, but Ned has time now, and not even he is so old as to think that life cannot go on.

She smiles when she sees him, despite everything. She might have been crying a moment ago in her solitude, a southern lady far from home, a bride of this mercilessly hard land, but for him she conjures up all her reserves of warmth, holds it out in her open hands for him to take as he would, for no other reason than that she is his now and is willing, wanting, to be his forever.

“Hullen said your horse had taken a fall on the ice today,” she starts, not waiting for his formalities. “I was worried. It’s late.”

She rises and walks to him. Her shift is thin and loose, and Ned can see the silhouette of her gentle curves when she crosses into the moonlight. There is no self-consciousness in her movements, nor coyness; all they are is all they are, and nothing about the feel of a body against one’s own, the breath of a lover at one’s ear, need be wrong. She kisses him first, with her eyes closed, because she is the brave one, and from there it’s the least he can do.

“I’m alright. All in one piece.”

When she kisses him again her hands are quick at his cloak and the neck of his doublet. She is eager and a little wild, for all that they are proud, stern Lord and Lady Stark to the world outside. She is young, after all.

“Good.”

They move to the bed in unison, and it all feels very easy at this time of night, when the only demands are to do what one likes. He likes stillness and the cool night air, and the sound of a woman’s midnight sighs. Ned wonders sometimes if she thinks of the other man when she lays with him, but he knows it is not sound. She is not the one who brought a bastard child into their home, unknown and unexplained, and that road is too weary and black to travel down too often. He wonders, but no more than that, and one day his worries could all be for nothing. One day this day could be but a ripple swallowed by a wave.

He tugs the shift off her shoulders and lays a palm over her the soft swell of her breast, and when she begins to twist underneath him he eases between her legs and watches as the pleasure overtakes her fine-boned face. Her mouth moves wordlessly in the shape of his name, and they are lovers then, taking and giving what they would, what two people like themselves possibly could. “Possible” is a question for the poets.

She sleeps with a small smile resting on her face, and he thinks, Why can’t we?

**Author's Note:**

> (also @ Livejournal [here](http://asoiaf-exchange.livejournal.com/58080.html) and [here](http://penandfink.livejournal.com/27347.html))


End file.
